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Saturday, 5 March 2016

Nevada City Series: Gold Dust Collective

-->A few months ago I re-blogged the home of Tiger Lillie and Aimee from The Gold Dust Collective. Since then I have become a little obsessed with the magic that is Nevada City. The vibe is that of my favourite book "Handmade house" and it is great to see these awesome wooden homed communities are still very much alive and kicking ...... such a dream of mine to live like this........So i have decided to make March a Nevada City Month on Moon to Moon and will be featuring a few artists, shop keepers and other creatives lucky enough to call Nevada City their home....

So to kick off the Nevada City Series here is an interview with Nikiya from the source of my obsession...... the fabulous Gold Dust Collective

Jessica Agnew's wooden cabin and Ceramics in an artists community in Nevada City

Jessica Agnew

Who are the Gold Dust collective?

We are Kat Alves, who is an architectural photographer
and mama and myself, a designer and mama. We were born here, left to go to
college and see the world some, and returned to make lives for ourselves
here.

The home of Fat and The Moon's

How did the two of you meet?

We were both born here, though didn’t know each other
growing up, and were working on a styled photo shoot one day and realized we
had a mutual love of quirky hand-made homes and homesteads that were built
during the back-to-the-land period in our watershed.

What inspired you to start the Gold Dust Collective?

It’s a funny small town story. Gold Dust was
originally a group of three of my dear friends who started it to do event and
wedding planning. I was a part of a little retail establishment called
Kitkitdizzi. The Gold Dust women had been working as employees at Kitkitdizzi
and rented the back out to use for meetings. Not long after starting Gold Dust,
they bought Kitkitdizzi and realized they couldn’t do retail and event
planning so the Gold Dust entity lay dormant until I begged for the name and
green light to make it into something else. I wanted it to be a container of
sorts to represent all of the local artists and creatives that make up our
community. I was going to do design work and see what else came through
collaborations with other creatives. Then I met Kat. We started talking about
how we love people and spaces and letting the process dictate the direction our
energy goes.

How do you meet your subjects for your
Folktales?

We’ve known all of them so far. This is a small,
tight-knit community. If you don’t know someone personally, chances are someone
you know does, or your folks know their folks, or you’ve seen them a hundred
times at the grocery store, or you go to their Yoga class, or they fix your
car, or your kids go to school together. You get the idea. There are many
ways we all overlap, which is both wonderful and challenging. There are a few
folks on the horizon we don’t know well, but are humbled to be able to meet.
This whole project is having the side effect of growing us closer to the place
we come from and the people in it.

Can you tell us a little bit about the history of
Nevada City?

Prior to the Gold Rush these lands were inhabited by
Nisenan and Maidu Indians. The discovery of gold nearby in 1849 changed that
dramatically with the sudden influx of miners and immigrants. These hopefuls
blasted the hillsides with water, dug elaborate tunnels underground, and
excavated the river beds and in search of gold. It was short lived,
successful for some, and devastating. There are huge swaths of land called the
diggins where the soil has been all but washed away until Central Valley
farmers put an end to it when the flooding became intolerable. But while it
was happening a town was built, the architecture of which defines the downtown
historical district. Ironically, the same river that was sought after as a
source for gold by the miners, the Yuba, became a source of magnetism for
a new wave of preservationists and back-to-the-land enthusiasts in the 60’s and
70’s. They came here for the slow pace, the solitude, to be a part of some
burgeoning spiritual communities, the mountains, and as so many say, for the
river. We, myself and Kat, are the children of these folks. We are each raising
kids in the town we were born in. We take our kiddos to the same holes we swam
in as children. Nevada City is not one thing. It’s hippies and rednecks and
artists and tradespeople, liberals and conservatives. It’s dynamic and it’s
boring, Its history is informing its future. And its just really
beautiful.

You are working on a book , can you tell us a little
more about this?

A little. We set out to produce a visual story of the
community and the diverse group of folks that make up this place, but it’s
evolving all of the time. Presently we are digging more deeply into what story
we want to tell. We always ask people why they are here and why they stay and
what we hear is often some expression of a love of place. It’s hard to put
words to. In a broader culture where people tend to migrate for work, we seem
to be a community of the opposite, of folks who stay put despite the lack of
it. And it’s not easy, especially for our generation. We seem to be, generally
speaking, folks who favor quality of life over standard of living.

You mention on your website that Dick Hotchkiss took a while to
convince, do you have any other homes that you would love to capture?

He’s just private. It’s one of the things we have to
contend with being drawn to the very people who prefer to be reclusive or have
homes that are illegal. We only want to capture the homes of people who delight
in sharing them. So far we have been blessed. Being welcomed into someone’s
private world in exchange for images and information is very intimate. I almost
always get teary and absolutely, every time, am filled with gratitude. These
places reflect the hearts of souls of the people who built and occupy them. We
don’t take it lightly and are careful not to have it be an expose. There are
many homes we would honored to be let into, that we haven’t even reached out to
yet, and some we’ll never see.

Thank you so much to Nikiya. Please be sure to check out their awesome website, especially their Folktales section for more about the Nevada City Residents

hi there im a single mama strugglin in gold land here and cant find a home for myself two kids and cat and dog.. oh how i would love to live on the land with wood houses.. so so beautiful. might you know of any openings anywhere.. need to get grounded and get my kids and i into a tribe real soon.. be well Theresa

** most of the pictures I have used have been from pintrest and tumblr, sadly many have no credit. I am slowly working my way through my past posts trying to add sources. If you recognise a picture please please drop me an email, or leave a comment in that post. Cheers Gabi xxx